A double A side from The Everly Brothers, but it's very much a game of two halves. First off, 'Claudette was originally written by Roy Orbison while he was still plying his trade as a rocker at Sun Studios. As he wrote the song for his wife it was always going to be a tall order for anyone to tackle it and make it their own, and though the brothers are game enough with some choppy acoustic bursts that stab with a purpose, it's all a bit too hayseed for my liking. The drive of the original is lost and the brothers never sounded less comfortable on a song where their harmonies weren't allowed to shine.
The gold is on the other side - 'All I Have To Do Is Dream' is a Felice and Boudleaux Bryant tune that provided a coupling which Orbison, knowing a thing or two about dreams himself, would have appreciated. The song is wistful enough in anyone's hands, but the lazy longing for a lover who may not even care is captured perfectly by the summer's almost gone ambience of the twin harmonies that make "I need you so that I could die" sound like a throwaway remark of adolescent angst yet at the same time totally believable.
Unlike Tab Hunter's attempt to describe it, this is young love personified, a curious mix of ennui, inexperience, inertia and obsession that the older generation would frown upon and dismiss with a curt 'pull yourself together'. But by 1958 popular music wasn't aimed four square at such people anymore, and away from sex crazed rebellion (sic), rock & roll could have a tender side that was no less appreciated by the young. Ah yes, the young - the Everly's know there's no future in living for maybes ("Only trouble is, gee whiz, I'm dreaming my life away"), yet they manage to sound like they neither care nor care that they don't care and in that sense the song is an emotional dead end representing an ever looping spiral of self delusion that leads nowhere, helped no end by the not quite there dreamlike (sorry!) ambience of shimmering guitar.
This isn't the straight forward young lust of 'I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight. Get teenage kicks right through the night"* or the couldn't give a fuck self loathing of "I've got nothing to do, but hang around and get screwed up on you"** (to cite two more contemporary riffs on the same theme) but something more detached and somnambulistic, a mood that recalls T.S. Eliot's (who himself knew a thing or two about somnambulism) "One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing white light folded". More akin in fact to Orbison's own "In dreams you're mine all of the time, we're together in dreams", right back where we started in other words. In short, a timeless quality that gives it a timeless appeal that makes it entirely appropriate that the song closes on a repeated "Dream, dream, dream dream" - teenage dreams really are so hard to beat.
The gold is on the other side - 'All I Have To Do Is Dream' is a Felice and Boudleaux Bryant tune that provided a coupling which Orbison, knowing a thing or two about dreams himself, would have appreciated. The song is wistful enough in anyone's hands, but the lazy longing for a lover who may not even care is captured perfectly by the summer's almost gone ambience of the twin harmonies that make "I need you so that I could die" sound like a throwaway remark of adolescent angst yet at the same time totally believable.
Unlike Tab Hunter's attempt to describe it, this is young love personified, a curious mix of ennui, inexperience, inertia and obsession that the older generation would frown upon and dismiss with a curt 'pull yourself together'. But by 1958 popular music wasn't aimed four square at such people anymore, and away from sex crazed rebellion (sic), rock & roll could have a tender side that was no less appreciated by the young. Ah yes, the young - the Everly's know there's no future in living for maybes ("Only trouble is, gee whiz, I'm dreaming my life away"), yet they manage to sound like they neither care nor care that they don't care and in that sense the song is an emotional dead end representing an ever looping spiral of self delusion that leads nowhere, helped no end by the not quite there dreamlike (sorry!) ambience of shimmering guitar.
This isn't the straight forward young lust of 'I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight. Get teenage kicks right through the night"* or the couldn't give a fuck self loathing of "I've got nothing to do, but hang around and get screwed up on you"** (to cite two more contemporary riffs on the same theme) but something more detached and somnambulistic, a mood that recalls T.S. Eliot's (who himself knew a thing or two about somnambulism) "One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing white light folded". More akin in fact to Orbison's own "In dreams you're mine all of the time, we're together in dreams", right back where we started in other words. In short, a timeless quality that gives it a timeless appeal that makes it entirely appropriate that the song closes on a repeated "Dream, dream, dream dream" - teenage dreams really are so hard to beat.
* The Undertones - Teenage Kicks
** Therapy? - Screamager. Chosen purely for the personal pleasure of seeing Therapy? and The Everly Brothers together in the same review.
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